Wednesday, August 31, 2016

This isn’t Diabetes Burnout. At least this isn’t what burnout looks like for me. But there is definitely something going on. And I’ve realized it’s best described as Diabetes Tune-out.

When I’m in burnout, things get really sloppy. I swag bolus more than I carb count. I dose off my CGM rather than doing finger sticks. I don’t pre-bolus. I graze and randomly dose. I take CGM breaks. I feel really really aggravated with diabetes and I just want to ignore it. (I don’t ignore it . . . . because I want to live . . . . . but when I’m burnt I really really want to ignore it. And maybe I ignore bits and pieces of diabetes.)

None of that is going on here. But something is. I just don’t want to think about diabetes. I don’t want to write about it. Or Tweet or Facebook. Or comment on blogs. Or participate in #dsma. Or do all those other things I usually love to do. Instead I’ve just wanted to tune out. And so, I have.

Instead, I’ve been cooking and baking and working on the house. I’ve been gardening in the sunshine. I’ve been shopping and going out for cocktails. I’ve been texting my friends with pictures of my cat sticking out her tongue. I’ve been doing fun stuff, quietly and without tying it to diabetes. In a way, I’ve been sticking out my tongue at diabetes.

I realize that Diabetes Tune-Out is maybe something I need to let happen every so often. I think (and hope) it might be the break I need to fend off Diabetes Burnout. But today, I felt like writing a post. And I’m looking forward to participating in #dsma tonight. I’m ready to tune back in.

Monday, August 8, 2016

Last night I slept without a sensor. I’ll be traveling later in the week and delayed inserting my new sensor so its life will span the entire time I’m sleeping solo in a hotel room. I don’t know how diabetes inherently knows that I’m lacking the safely net of my sensor, but somehow it does. And it picks that time to go completely off the rails.

Pete and I are working our way through The West Wing on Netflix, and we settled in to watch another episode from Season 2 before bed. I did a finger-stick to make sure things were good.

They were. But I did another about an hour before bed to see which way my numbers were heading.

Ugh. While 73 isn’t too terrible a number for me in general, the fact that it flashed up an hour before bedtime, and that I had dropped 20 points in 30 minutes, was not what I was hoping for. So I had four fruit Tootsie Rolls and we watched the end of the episode. An hour later I was ready for one last finger-stick and some much needed sleep.

Diabetes had another plan. 54 is an unsafe number for me at any time, and the fact that I continued to drop after treating was troubling. So I ate three Orange Cream Glucolifts (yum) and brushed my teeth. Then I played with K.C. until the 15 minute mark had passed so I could confirm I was back up and finally sleep.

Nope, diabetes was really laughing at me now. My swearing woke Pete up, who saw the 43 and headed downstairs to get me some juice. Juice isn’t really my low treat of choice, but it always brings me up and works very fast when I’m really low. So juice it was, and a good amount at that. My only symptom during this long bout of lows was some hefty anxiety, which melted away. So I brushed my teeth again and drifted off to sleep. Until I woke up two hours later with my mind nagging me to finger-stick again.

Okay, WTF?????? I didn’t want to wake Pete again so I was much quieter when I swore. I knew I probably needed more than just the Glucolift on my nightstand. So I stumbled downstairs, where I ate two Peeps horded from Easter, some Dots and four crackers with crunchy peanut butter. I went back upstairs to brush my teeth a third time, during which I dropped the toothpaste and knocked over a cup and ended up waking poor Pete up anyway. I played on my phone a bit until I was confident it was safe to sleep. And it was a nice three hours of rest until K.C. meowed me awake to give her a snuggle. She does this several times each night. She’s very sweet and loving, which means I’m generally very tired. But in this case, I was glad she got lonely, because as she settled in next to me and I began petting her I could tell things weren’t good. The palms of my hands and the soles of my feet felt like sandpaper. My lips felt like they would start cracking at any minute. And my mouth was so so dry and I was so so thirsty.

Yeah. I don’t even know what to say. I took a correction plus one unit, as is usually needed when I find myself over 250. I got up yet again to have some water and check for ketones (which thankfully were negative, so at least one thing went right last night). When the alarm went off two hours later, I was still 207 but with enough active insulin working to bring me back into range. However, I don’t think there is enough active caffeine working to rid me of feeling like I’ve been run over by a truck.

Okay, diabetes. You won the battle last night. But tonight we spar again, and I’m really hoping to win this time. Because I really need to sleep . . . .

I Am . . .

Karen Graffeo

I'm a Knitter living with Type 1 Diabetes. I'm not a medical professional nor am I giving medical advice - I'm just a girl sharing my personal thoughts and experiences with diabetes. I live in New England with my wonderful husband, my adorable cat, and lots and lots of yarn.